oon as
they appeared to predominate in the Assembly. He formed, with Petion and
some others of small note, a small band of opposition, radically
democratic, who encouraged the Jacobins without, and menaced Barnave and
the Lameths whenever they ventured to pause. Petion and Robespierre in
the Assembly, Brissot and Danton at the Jacobin Club, formed the nucleus
of the new party which was destined to accelerate the movement and
speedily to convert it into convulsions and catastrophes.

Petion was a popular Lafayette: popularity was his aim, and he acquired
it earlier than Robespierre. A barrister without talent but upright, he
had imbibed no more of philosophy than the Social Contract; young, good
looking and a patriot, he was destined to become one of those
complaisant idols of whom the people make what they please except a man;
his credit in the streets and amongst the Jacobins gave him a certain
amount of authority in the Assembly, where he was listened to as the
significant echo of the will out of doors. Robespierre affected to
respect him.

XIX.

The constitution was completed, the regal power was but a mere name, the
king was but the executive of the orders of the national representation,
his ministers only responsible hostages in the hands of the Assembly.
The vices of this constitution were evident before it was entirely
finished. Voted in the rage of parties, it was not a constitution, it
was a vengeance of the people against the monarchy, the throne only
existing as the substitute of a unique power which was every where
instituted, but which no one yet dared to name. The people, parties,
trembled lest on removing the throne they should behold an abyss in
which the nation would be engulphed: it was thus tacitly agreed to
respect its forms, though they daily despoiled and insulted the
unfortunate monarch whom they kept chained to it.

Things were at that point where they have no possible termination except
in a catastrophe. The army, without discipline, added but another
element to the popular ferment: forsaken by its officers, who emigrated
in masses, the subalterns seized upon democracy and propagated it in
their ranks. Affiliated in every garrison with the Jacobin Club, they
received from it their orders, and made of their troops soldiers of
anarchy, accomplices of faction. The people to whom they had cast as a
prey the feudal rights of the nobility and the tithes of the clergy,
feared to have wrested fro